The Library of Powers

Chapter 5: Lunch

It was Friday, and Jackson was on his daily walk to the Writing Well. Today was brighter then the previous few weeks had been, a brief respite in the heavy winter they had been having. Not that it wasn't still bitingly cold. As Jackson neared the fountain, he gazed up the steps of the Vera City Public Library. He wasn't sure if he had ever even been inside it. Maybe when he was very young, but he didn't really have a need for books when in a sense he carried all of them.

The water's edge was invitingly serene, perfectly clear with much more of a blue tint then it had had on the previous overcast days. Nor was the water disturbed by the ripples of hands being placed into it, he had arrived even earlier than normal today. Without further ado, Jackson rested his hand on the floor of the fountain, feeling a slight pressure on his palm, not from the water's tiles, but from something else entirely. Four seconds later he read his message, which had a list of three things entitled "To do:"

"1) Go to the library and you'll find something strikingly similar to your Library."

"2) Come back tomorrow. Make sure you use the well."

"3) Turn around. She's behind you."

As Jackson pondered over the meaning of the first two instructions, he didn't even have time to register the third, which turned out to be a huge mistake when he heard a familiar voice. "Jackson, fancy meeting you here," Melanie said, walking over to the fountain in a blue dress. It was still winter, right? Or had everyone collectively moved on and he was just imagining the chilly conditions?

"Hey, Melanie," Jackson acknowledged, shoving his hand in his coat pocket before fully turning to face her. He got an intense feeling of Deja-vu from just two days before, but this time it wasn't himself he was hiding the penmanship from.

"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at school?" she replied, being far too friendly. She must be trying real hard to make up for Wednesday, Jackson thought. He decided to forgive, but he wouldn't forget.

"Oh, I come here every day," he told her.

"Really? So do I," she admitted, "Isn't it strange that we never saw each other before?"

"Normally I'm not here for another half hour or so."

"That would explain it. Alright, let's see what it says!" Melanie proclaimed as she made a large swooping motion to dive her arm into the pool. Submerged, Jackson could see the black serpents twirl up her arm, writing something that almost covered her forearm. She removed her arm from the water, reading the message out of Jackson's view, and then rotated her elbow so he could discern the message.

"You aren't connected to the well. Don't expect any other real messages." the Writing Well had written in large, bold ink. It was interesting how her message was only half the size of Jackson's but took up more than four times the space.

"Well, there's my answer," Melanie said dejectedly. "I guess this means it's back to just repeating what my power says."

"If it just repeats, why come?" Jackson asked her.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," she quoted.

Jackson retorted with another quote, "Trying something again and again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity." To that Melanie just smiled, and lowered her arm.

"Well, what did yours say?" she asked him. 

Shit. She couldn't see his message, or she would wonder what "your Library" meant. Instead of directly answering her, he stuck his dry hand into the well. He planned to show her that nothing had come up, and suggest that maybe his day wait hadn't yet ended. Of course, it had just begun, but therein lied the trick. To his surprise, when he pulled out his hand there actually was something written there.

"You forgot your lunch..." Melanie uttered, reciting the sentence the Writing Well had given him. Jackson checked his backpack, and he really had forgotten his lunch. He had been wondering why he was ready for school so early this morning.

"Guess I'll have to buy something," he sighed.

Melanie crooked an eye at him. "You want a ride? We could stop by the grocery store before school. You won't have time if you walk," she offered.

Jackson was about to accept, but then remembered the first task the well had given him. He looked at the library looming over them and shook his head. "Sorry, I've got to grab a book first."

"Oh yeah, I remember in Superpower class, you said you liked to read," she said, "Don't shut yourself in. Are you going to Selina's party?"

"Yeah. How did you know I was invited?"

"I know Selina. Be careful around her, she can't be trusted," she shuddered, then turned to leave. As she was walking towards a parked car, presumably hers, Jackson shouted out "Some people would say that about you!"

Melanie didn't respond or even acknowledge his outburst, she just kept moving towards her car. Jackson sheepishly went the opposite direction, cursing himself for his big fat mouth. He had been fine not saying anything for so long, and now in the busiest week of his life, he can't stop flapping his jaws.

Gazing at the central branch of the Vera City public library, Jackson couldn't help but feel underwhelmed. It was a tetrahedron of glass embedded into the ground, tilted to seem like an outcropping of crystal in a long-forgotten cavern. That wasn't what bugged Jackson. It was The size of The building. It must have been only three or four floors, barely the size of his high school. As a library in a major city, it had always annoyed him that their library was so small.

Jackson walked through the sliding glass doors, past the metal detector, and into the main lobby. The architecture was an engineer's nightmare and a designer's wet dream. Lofts of various heights spotted the sloped walls, with sky bridges and floating staircases extending between them. There was little rhyme or reason, it was simply a mess of steel wires pretending to support things and steel beams truly supporting them. As Jackson gawked in the semi-circular entrance, he realized he was getting in the way of the other patrons, so he moved over to a corner near a wide stairwell.

Why had the Library sent him here? He examined the room and found no resemblance to The Library of Powers. He would have remembered a room such as this.

Meandering the ground floor, Jackson kept an eye out for anything out of the ordinary, but found nothing. Taking a chance, he headed over to the nearest librarian station and asked the apathetic college student sitting there, "Is there more to the library I'm not seeing?"

He was going out on a limb, but it turned out that limb was very sturdy. "Yeah," the young librarian answered, "You mean the Index? Most people want to check that out. Head downstairs."

After pointing out where the closest stairs were, Jackson took his advice and went down the stairs. What he found there left him in awe. There actually was much more to Vera City's library, but even more importantly, he had seen "the Index" before.

It was the rotunda from The Library of Powers. Exactly the same. It went nine floors deep, had a renaissance mural, the whole shebang. The difference here was the dozens of people perusing the shelves. Jackson racked his brain to remember where the entrance he had come in from was. His answer lied in the mural, as looking at it from a certain direction revealed different images. He remembered a Greek god sitting on a throne from where he entered, so matching up the positioning of that painting gave Jackson his location. As it turned out, his entrance was here just a blank wall, with a lonely potted plant.

This was an important discovery for Jackson. If there were two areas in the Library with a real-world counterpart, then maybe every area was. He suspected that wasn't the case, as both of the areas that did correspond were seemingly removed from the rest of the Library. That, however, raised even more questions. He put those away for now because he was going to be late for school.

Before Jackson left, he checked the part of the mural where the stairs up were. There were four sets, each in a cardinal direction indicated by a compass rose in the very center of the painted dome. Jackson didn't think he would have any trouble finding one.

As he exited, Jackson bumped into the librarian who had helped him find his way into the "Archives". Muttering a quick apology, the librarian laughed it off and told him, "Don't worry Jackson. Happens to the best of us."

The rest of Jackson's walk was --- thankfully --- uneventful.